Emet m'Tsiyon

Sunday, June 09, 2013

When fascism comes to America, it will be called anti-fascismattributed to Huey Long

We have already dealt with Prez Obama's admiration for former US President Franklin D Roosevelt and the parallels between the two in the anti-Jewish area. Now, Rafael Medoff has provided some meaty quotes from the archives about FDR's actual hatred for Jews, also paralleled in his contempt for Japanese Americans and other peoples of Asian origin.

Here are quotes from Medoff's article[one quote below from FDR is inexplicably missing some words which I will fill in from another source]:

"The U.S. immigration system severely
limited the number of German Jews admitted during the Nazi years [under the quota for Germany] to
about 26,000 annually–but even that quota [the quota for Germany] was less than 25% filled
during most of the Hitler era, because the Roosevelt administration
piled on so many extra requirements for would-be immigrants. For
example, as of 1941, merely having a close relative in Europe was enough
disqualify an applicant–because of the Roosevelt administration’s
absurd belief that the immigrant would become a spy for Hitler so that
his relative in Europe would not be harmed by the Nazis. "Another
example: there were instances in which an applicant showed the U.S.
Consulate in Berlin a copy of his Jewish marriage certificate (his
ketubah) but was unable to secure his civil marriage certificate from an
uncooperative Nazi bureaucrat. The Consulate refused to recognize the
validity of the Jewish certificate and therefore considered the
applicant’s children to be illegitimate. Having illegitimate children
disqualified the applicant on the grounds of 'moral character.'Why did the administration actively
seek to discourage and disqualify Jewish refugees from coming to the
United States? Why didn’t the president quietly tell his State
Department (which administered the immigration system) to fill the
quotas for Germany and Axis-occupied countries to the legal limit?"

Here is FDR on Asians:"Roosevelt’s . . . pattern of private remarks about Jews, Asians, and immigrants in general are revealing. . . ."When Roosevelt was spending time in
Georgia in the mid 1920s, he wrote a number of articles about the
hot-button topic of the day, Japanese immigration. In one 1925 column
for the Macon Daily Telegraph, FDR wrote: 'Anyone who has traveled in
the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or
American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate
results.' . . . Not that FDR opposed all immigration; he
favored the admission of some Europeans, so long as they had what he
called 'blood of the right sort.'”

As we know, Roosevelt ordered the imprisonment in camps --concentration camps?-- of"thousands of Japanese-Americans in detention camps during World War II, even though none of them had been engaged in espionage." [Medoff]Next Medoff asks us to"Consider Roosevelt’s record of private statements and actions regarding Jews.In 1923, as a member of Harvard’s Board
of Overseers, Roosevelt became concerned that, as he put it, 'a third
of the entering class at Harvard were Jews.' He helped institute a quota
to limit the number of Jews admitted to 15% of each class. Even many
years later, FDR was still proud of doing that–and said so to Treasury
Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., in 1941.

"In 1936, he characterized a tax
maneuver by the publisher of the New York Times as 'a dirty Jewish
trick.' In 1938, FDR privately suggested to Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, the
era’s most prominent American Jewish leader, that Jews in Poland were
dominating the economy and were to blame for provoking antisemitism
there. In 1939, Roosevelt expressed (to a U.S. senator) his pride that 'there is no Jewish blood in our veins.' In 1940, he dismissed pleas
for Jewish refugees as 'Jewish wailing' and 'sob stuff.' In 1941,
President Roosevelt remarked at a cabinet meeting that there were too
many Jews among federal employees in Oregon.

"The most detailed of FDR’s statements
about Jews was made during his meeting on January 17, 1943, in
Casablanca, with leaders of the new local regime in Allied-liberated
North Africa. U.S. ambassador Robert Murphy remarked that the 330,000
Jews in North Africa were 'very much disappointed that ‘the war for
liberation’ had not immediately resulted in their being given their
complete freedom.'"

[before WW2 Jews in the Mediterranean provinces of Algeria had the rights of French citizens according to the Cremieux Decree of the 19th cebtury, whereas In Tunisia and Morocco the Jews were equal to the rest of the native population --Arabs and Berbers-- which was an improvement for the Jews over their pre-French conquest status as inferior dhimmis --note by Eliyahu]

"According to the official record of the
conversation [with Robert Murphy] (later published by the U.S. government in its ‘Foreign
Relations of the United States’ series), the president replied that 'the
number of Jews { engaged in the practice of the professions (law, medicine, etc)} should be definitely limited to the percentage that the
Jewish population in North Africa bears to the whole of the North
African population,' which 'would not permit them to overcrowd the
professions.'"FDR explained that his plan 'would
further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the
Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they
represented a small part of the population, over fifty percent of the
lawyers, doctors, school teachers, college professors, etc, in Germany,
were Jews.' (It is not clear where FDR obtained those wildly inflated statistics.)The most common theme in Roosevelt’s
private statements about Jews has to do with his perception that they
were 'overcrowding' many professions, exercising undue influence, and
needed to be 'spread out thin' so as to keep them in check."

FDR saw both Jews and Asians as undesirable in the United States:"FDR regarded Asians as having innate
racial characteristics that made them untrustworthy. Likewise, he
apparently viewed with disdain what he saw as the innate characteristics
of Jews. Admitting significant numbers of 'non-assimilable' Jewish or
Asian immigrants did not fit comfortable in FDR’s vision of America.President Roosevelt’s unflattering
private opinions about Jews do not explain everything about his response
to the Holocaust. Certainly some of his decisions were motivated by
other factors:"

The other factors do not bestow any credit for liberal decency on Roosevelt:" * Angering the Arabs: FDR refused to
pressure the British to open Palestine to [Jewish] refugees because he was
concerned about angering the Arab world. He told his cabinet in 1944
that he opposed a pro-Zionist resolution in Congress because it might
provoke Arab terrorist attacks on Allied positions in the Mideast,
leading to 'the death of a hundred thousand men.' (The resolution
eventually passed; it did not provoke any attacks.) In fact, FDR was so
averse to being seen as pro-Zionist that he rejected even a request to
permit the Palestine (Jewish) Symphony Orchestra to name one of its
theaters the 'Roosevelt Amphitheatre' No wonder Rabbi Wise privately
believed FDR was 'hopelessly and completely under the domination of the
English Foreign Office [and] the Colonial Office.'" But when concerned about election results, he was capable of action for Jewish refugees:" *
Election-Year Politics: Although President Roosevelt quickly approved a
1943 proposal to create a government agency to rescue medieval art and
architecture in war-torn Europe, he fought tooth and nail against
creating a refugee rescue agency. Presumably the main reason was fear
that helping refugees would be unpopular. In the end, though, pressure
from Congress, Jewish activists, and the Treasury Department was about
to explode into an election-year scandal over his administration’s
sabotage of rescue opportunities. FDR pre-empted his critics by
establishing the War Refugee Board in early 1944. "Of course, as many know, he refused to use US military power to stop the mass murder process conducted by Nazi Germany against the Jews. Here I disagree with Medoff:" * Indifference: The Roosevelt
administration’s rejection of requests to bomb Auschwitz seems to have
stemmed primarily from a mindset that not even minimal resources should
be expended on helping the Jews."

In my informed opinion, Roosevelt was not motivated by "indifference" in refusing to bomb Auschwitz. It was sheer hatred and contempt.Yet we may agree in part with Medoff's conclusion:"the revelation of Franklin Roosevelt’s
sentiments will shock some people. After all, he led America in the war
against Hitler. Moreover, FDR’s entire public persona was anchored in
his image as a liberal humanitarian, his claim to care about 'the
forgotten man,' the downtrodden, the mistreated. "Yes, FDR, was seen as the paragon of the "liberal humanitarian" and is still loved and admired by ignoramuses today who style themselves liberal humanitarians. Obama too likes to shine in FDR's reflected glory, false though it be. Obama too is as hypocritical and as sinister as Roosevelt himself. Especially for Jews.Other links re FDR and Jews:Rafael Medoff's article: hereOn Point of No Return here, here, & here.[several words in rounded brackets have been inserted into one of the paragraphs above because they were inexplicably left out of the article's text on the Brandeis site. However, Medoff had published them before and I reinserted the missing words from those sources]

Dr Medoff is director of the David Wyman Institute which is mainly devoted to study of US policy toward Jews during the Nazi period which was so fateful for the Jewish people and the world. Much of what Medoff writes is based on the pioneering research in this field of David S Wyman, in fact a non-Jew, who first published his findings on this subject in the 1960s-1970s. One of Wyman's important books is David S Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews [New York: Pantheon 1984].

About

The world swims in lies. Who doesn't know that? Even the dupes are told there are lies about. We aim to dispel the fog of lies, especially about Israel, like our prophets of old and our poets like Yehudah haLevi.
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How shall I render my vows and my bonds, While yet
Zion lieth beneath the fetter of Edom, and I in Arab chains?
The false prophets cry Peace, and there is no peace.
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About Me

צלום דבורה בת יהודה לייב ז''ל
Dvoyreh bas Yehudah Leyb, Eliyahu's mother. My own photo will have to await more peaceful times.
I have been an observer of
the human comedy, and the human tragedy for many years.